# Forward Mentoring: A Reverse Mentoring-Inspired Initiative to Enhance Cultural Humility and Promote Academic Leadership Capacity

## TL;DR

A new mentoring program called Forward Mentoring connects people across academic levels to build cultural humility and leadership skills through open discussions.

## Contribution

The Forward Mentoring framework introduces a novel approach to fostering inclusivity and leadership through cross-hierarchy relationships.

## Key findings

- The program promotes honest and reflective discourse to enhance cultural humility.
- Initial implementation and evaluation plans are outlined to assess program efficacy.
- Pilot data suggests potential for fostering inclusive workplaces.

## Abstract

Building relationships and broadening perspectives promotes cultural competence, inclusion, and belonging. At Indiana University School of Medicine, we created an innovative reverse mentoring-inspired program (Forward Mentoring) to connect individuals across academic hierarchies with the goal of fostering relationships, cultural humility, and leadership capacity through honest, personal, and reflective discourse—all to build more inclusive and welcoming workplaces. Here we describe the novel Forward Mentoring framework, outline the initial programmatic design and implementation, and present an evaluation plan that assesses learning, growth, satisfaction, and program efficacy. Evaluation data from a limited pilot is presented and future directions discussed.